I'm a huge fan of Blizzard and a persistent gamer;I take what I can get with every game and try to have as much fun as I can with it. With every Blizzard game before Diablo III, I was able to get my money?s worth, and I held the belief that Blizzard is the company with the highest quality products until now.
I was really looking forward to playing Diablo 3 for years to come. CE purchased and everything. I'm a huge fan of Diablo I and II and to be honest I am very much let down by this game. It feels rushed, certain corners cut and overall not an improvement on Diablo II. At the same time, it feels like Diablo II was used as a standard on parts where improvements could've been made, (number of classes; length of the game, etc) especially with the time it took to develop it. I hit 60 and beat Act I on inferno and after that I just didn't feel like going back to playing anymore. This compared to years I've spent playing your other RPGs; Diablo I, II and WoW. It's so sad that I'll be quitting a game in my very most favourite series in the history of videogaming.
Story
- Journals and logs are tedious. Why split them up to bits? I lost interest in Lachdanan's Journals after the first one. The monster logs are very much in your face and I just wanted to turn them off somehow. Also, why have journals on completely unnecessary things like Leoric going mad? It added no sense of depth to the game. We already knew Leoric was going mad, and listening to dull logs which hints at him going mad is rather insulting, as it?s hinting at the fact that he was going mad (even though it has been blatantly stated that he was mad) when we?ve already killed his (insane) skeleton. Instead, I?d rather have seen some journal logs from PoVs to give us background on Caldeum, Bastion?s Keep, etc.
- The entire thing felt rushed. Couple that with a complex story results in no immersion. The only thing that drove me through the quests was the quest tracker, the minimap arrows and the blinking dots. This honestly just made the game too mechanical for me. 12 years after Diablo II and we've gone a step backwards. I remember having Mephisto's soulstone in my inventory and not being able to wait to destroy it, to now moving around the entire map to try to find that blinking dot.
- There is no immersion whatsoever. The "RPG" in ARPG should stand for something. My character, the nagging, narcissistic, overconfident Wizard was incredibly annoying. Why give characters narratives? It makes me unable to relate to my character at all and takes me completely out of the game. Also, if you?re going to include a narrative, at least make the dialogue good. "Then I will plug the hole with their bodies" is a predictable and generic line I?d expect to read out of a young adult fantasy novel.
- Speaking of young adult novels, the characters of the game are incredibly underdeveloped and one dimensional. Enigmatic characters like Tyrael become plain, textbook stock characters (the wise old man stock character). The twist was extremely predictable and various hinting of it (Zoltun Kulle, Leah?s Powers, Adria?s Log) only made the characters surreal to not notice it themselves. Also, does Chris Metzen know how to write anything else besides corrupting one of the main characters? (Kerrigan, Arthas, Deathwing, and now Leah).
Setting
- The atmosphere of the game isn't great either. Before the game came out, I was one of the people who argued that you shouldn't judge a game before you play it. Well, now that I've played it, I can honestly say that it's too colourful. Furthermore, there was nothing epic about the settings of the game. The accessible part of Caldeum was so small I didn?t really feel it to be the magnificent ?Jewel of the East? that it was made to be, there was nothing epic about Caldeum or the High heavens for me to feel bad about them being corrupted and desecrate). I never felt any urgency to defend Bastion?s Keep because all it had were some monsters on some walls and some sprites in the background being looped. Take a page from CoD MW3. When I saw that Europe was a warzone, I couldn?t wait to get to set foot on the beach to start killing some enemies. Having just a bunch of demons sit around waiting for you to get there is incredibly uncreative and expected maybe from a 2001 game, not a 2012 game.
Graphics
Everything looks good for the game's system requirements. This is a consistency in Blizzard games. The game itself truly does feel like a "moving canvas". However, this is somewhat ruined by the sprites like the Seigebreaker Assaultbeast sprite you see while you're fighting on the walls of Bastion's Keep.
Gameplay
- The gameplay is better for the most part. At least boss and champion fights aren't "hold down one button and drink a potion every now and then". Bosses have mechanics to them now (but it doesn't change between difficulties, which is a huge letdown since bosses just do more damage and have more health, something that can easily be overcome with gear, which is really just Blizzard's way to make money; with gear). Once you get used to the new mechanics, though, the game seems incredibly dull because further difficulties has nothing new to them. True, Diablo II was the same thing, but more health, more damage is just an extremely cheap way to increase difficulty in a Blizzard game at this generation of videogaming. You can even take from WoW to add in more mechanics to each difficulty, but you didn't because you cut corners; because you made a game not based on skills, but on gear because you want to make money from the RMAH.
- battle.net 2.0; Blizzard needs to fire whoever is in charge of its development. I'm not complaining about the server downtimes (to be expected) or the online only (I don't really care, and its necessary anyways since there is the RMAH). No lobbies, terrible AH system (how did Blizzard drop the ball on this one, when you had the perfect AH with WoW?) extremely linear public game system, and no lobby just killed any success of battle.net. Public games are extremely non-social. You join a game to finish one quest, and then you probably leave. Along the way you are slowed down by other players due to the lack of communication due to the lack of a goal in general, and it drives you to play by yourself or with friends.
- Inferno mode isn't more difficult, it's just cheap. Tons of abilities and builds and even some classes are not viable. Mobs 2 shot even the tank classes who stack defensive stats. Ranged classes are forced to kite - and this doesn?t always work because some champions are unkitable, and others can and probably will one shot you during your 10 minute kite (you sacrificed damage for survivability, remember?) and regen to full before you can res and get back to them - or to resort to some really cheap/cookiecutter specs which have for the most part been nerfed. For the most part, inferno is about dying, trying to skip the impossible champion packs and dying more, waiting for the res timer, and crossing your fingers to get to the next checkpoint without dying and having to do all the aforementioned. This becomes EXTREMELY frustrating. Classes are forced to stack one or two attributes and it's Diablo II customisation all over again. Except this time, instead of being able to customize your own stats, you do it with items, and once again we arrive to the point that Blizzard wants you to get gear to be able to succeed at end game. Characters become less unique as you get closer to end game because mobs 3 shot anybody and have a ton of health because of the linear difficulty increase. Some may argue: ?well, inferno should be gear dependent to a level because it?s the hardest difficulty yet?. To that I ask, what am I supposed to farm, if end game hell gear isn?t good enough for inferno, and I can?t get any good gear in inferno without having to skip champion packs who are literally impossible for my class, or to spend sums of half an hour to wait to be ressed? To be successful at inferno within a reasonable time, you HAVE to use the AH or the RMAH, that?s just how Blizzard made the game.
- Itemisation is terrible. Nephalem Valor forces the player to lock into one spec which gives even less customisation in the game. Players pretty much get stuck in the same spec. Tons of items go to waste because the best items are rares and blues with random stats instead of uniques, this gives no motivation for anyone to farm anything because they're more likely to get say, an item with high damage and useless stats, or an item with good stats but poor damage. There isn't a drop which makes me feel extremely lucky and fortunate to get like it did in D2, which motivated me to farm more. The only thing that would've kept me playing D3 is the farm aspect, and Blizzard messed up on this too.
The biggest let down and probably the reason why I'm quitting is that continuation in D3 after reaching 60 isn't something I want to do. I've downed the Butcher on inferno and I've found myself sitting in the beginning of act 2 doing nothing. Not because I can't progress. I can if I wanted to. But it just feels tiring. Champion packs can be either easy to manageable to downright impossible. I know I can go back and farm everything, but the prospect of farming for rares and blues with a 1% chance of actually being useful for me due to the huge number of affixes as opposed to Diablo 2 is tiring for me just to think about. The problem is that I don?t know what I should be farming. What is truly considered the best, or even a good item in Diablo III? I simply don?t know because not having the concept of what?s good and what isn?t due to the number of affixes and the randomization it has makes it impossible to know. Randomisation is fine; it's what made D2 good, but having too much randomisation lead to impossible champion packs which become downright frustrating to even try to skip, and 90% of all items being moderately useless to completely useless. I can't see myself at endgame in D3, and I can't see myself progressing through D3 anymore because the progression would be so slow and tedious and I am forced to use the AH to even make it fast enough to be partly enjoyable.
The other thing is that endgame Diablo (inferno) forces me to play specs/stat accumulations that I don't want to play with. What if I don't want to play a Life leech barb stacked with Vitality? Or a monk with dodge? This is very reminiscent of WoW endgame and not Diablo endgame, where classes are forced into one spec with one stacked stat, and it's honestly something I don't enjoy. Overtime, new specs might become viable with better gear, but I feel that starting out in Inferno, you only have one or two really limited specs that you can choose from with each class if you don't have good gear, and they might not be enjoyable for you.
The worst aspect of the game is that everything that is wrong with Diablo III is stemming from the RMAH.
Why did Blizzard make the game online only?
Yes, I said that it isn?t something that bothered me, but there?s a pretty good reason why they made the game online only. One of the reasons is to prevent pirating of the game. The other reason is so everyone who is non-hardcore will be able to access or at least contribute to the RMAH. Every person who buys/sells on the RMAH will end up profiting Blizzard. If there was a single player mode, then there will be customers who will never use the RMAH, leading to lost profits. Inferno isn?t designed to be beaten by hardcore characters; in other words, hardcore characters are not expected to enjoy 100% of the game (for pretty much 95%+ of the hardcore playerbase) so the RMAH still takes up the bigger portion of the playerbase
Why did Blizzard have a good battle.net system, with bnet 1.0, but chose to make bnet 2.0 so terrible?
No game list/lobbies, and linearity in public games (made only to farm/and or to progress through the campaign). This is because Blizzard wants players to use the AH/RMAH in order to obtain gear. No more games or channels designed to trade, off to the AH we go.
Why are there extremely randomised stats? Why is inferno so cheap?
It?s because Inferno mode is gear dependent. In order to get gear, you can either spend hours grinding through the bosses to get junk that is blue/yellow/orange, but with bad stats, or just go to the RMAH and pay money to get the set that you really want. Randomised stats are there as an excuse for an actual stat system. Instead of making rares extremely hard to find, Blizzard simply made GOOD RARES extremely hard to find. There are legendaries too, which kept more or less the same concept as Uniques in D2. The only difference is that they aren?t good compared to random rares. Why? This is because to have say, Windforce being the absolute best item for DHs, the cost of Windforce will eventually deflate over time and Blizzard?s RMAH will be less and less profitable. With rares rolling random stats, however, deflation will never be a huge problem.
Why is there no stat allocation?
Blizzard has said that this is due to D2's stat allocation system only giving players the illusion of choice because everyone stacked the same stats anyways. Well, look at Inferno now. Stat point allocation is so customised across the board, right? No. Everyone is still only using 1-2 stats because 99% of specs aren't viable for inferno. Instead of being able to customise your own stats to give your character an edge due to your own research/gameplay choice, you are forced to be gear dependent when it comes to higher difficulties, leading you to make the choice of either farming for that 0.0001% rare item with the right affixes and stat weights, or to use the RMAH.
Why can you only have 10 items selling on the AH, and why can you not cancel auctions? Why is navigating through the AH, trying to find items by say, the time left on the bid, impossible?
This is to prevent anyone from playing with the AH, it is so Blizzard has full control over the AH (and more importantly, the RMAH). I wouldn't even be surprised if Blizz made it so that in D3, each respective class won't get drops that benefit themselves to incentivise them to use the RMAH so Blizz can make a profit.
Previously in D2 for instance, players that got to a part too hard for them may have looked to third parties for items to get an edge. If they had the money to spend that was their business I guess. But the game wasn't designed to be intentionally hard to the point where it would drive people to third parties, it was just the result of someone being impatient, and not wanting to work through the grind.
Smart developers see these third parties making all this money, and want to stop it (and who can blame them). Even smarter businessman says: "wait a minute, what if we provide the same service to these people that are spending their money anyway, then we can make some profit from it too". Shady businessman says: "hey we can even make the game intentionally hard, and control drop rates to spur the market". "No way," says honest business man, "we are just doing this for the players"! *snickers behind closed doors*.
But in the end, I don?t expect Blizzard to fix the game around these principles because their goal is to make money. As long as they have a mediocre game that some oblivious fans or casual gamers will defend saying it?s good, they?re content with it. And that?s fine, because it is their game. It?s just unfortunate that their game isn?t going to be a game that I?ll be playing. It?s just unfortunate that they chose the Diablo series ? my favourite series in the videogame industry - to ruthlessly make a profit out of and ruined any vestige it had.
Score: 1/5
I was really looking forward to playing Diablo 3 for years to come. CE purchased and everything. I'm a huge fan of Diablo I and II and to be honest I am very much let down by this game. It feels rushed, certain corners cut and overall not an improvement on Diablo II. At the same time, it feels like Diablo II was used as a standard on parts where improvements could've been made, (number of classes; length of the game, etc) especially with the time it took to develop it. I hit 60 and beat Act I on inferno and after that I just didn't feel like going back to playing anymore. This compared to years I've spent playing your other RPGs; Diablo I, II and WoW. It's so sad that I'll be quitting a game in my very most favourite series in the history of videogaming.
Story
- Journals and logs are tedious. Why split them up to bits? I lost interest in Lachdanan's Journals after the first one. The monster logs are very much in your face and I just wanted to turn them off somehow. Also, why have journals on completely unnecessary things like Leoric going mad? It added no sense of depth to the game. We already knew Leoric was going mad, and listening to dull logs which hints at him going mad is rather insulting, as it?s hinting at the fact that he was going mad (even though it has been blatantly stated that he was mad) when we?ve already killed his (insane) skeleton. Instead, I?d rather have seen some journal logs from PoVs to give us background on Caldeum, Bastion?s Keep, etc.
- The entire thing felt rushed. Couple that with a complex story results in no immersion. The only thing that drove me through the quests was the quest tracker, the minimap arrows and the blinking dots. This honestly just made the game too mechanical for me. 12 years after Diablo II and we've gone a step backwards. I remember having Mephisto's soulstone in my inventory and not being able to wait to destroy it, to now moving around the entire map to try to find that blinking dot.
- There is no immersion whatsoever. The "RPG" in ARPG should stand for something. My character, the nagging, narcissistic, overconfident Wizard was incredibly annoying. Why give characters narratives? It makes me unable to relate to my character at all and takes me completely out of the game. Also, if you?re going to include a narrative, at least make the dialogue good. "Then I will plug the hole with their bodies" is a predictable and generic line I?d expect to read out of a young adult fantasy novel.
- Speaking of young adult novels, the characters of the game are incredibly underdeveloped and one dimensional. Enigmatic characters like Tyrael become plain, textbook stock characters (the wise old man stock character). The twist was extremely predictable and various hinting of it (Zoltun Kulle, Leah?s Powers, Adria?s Log) only made the characters surreal to not notice it themselves. Also, does Chris Metzen know how to write anything else besides corrupting one of the main characters? (Kerrigan, Arthas, Deathwing, and now Leah).
Setting
- The atmosphere of the game isn't great either. Before the game came out, I was one of the people who argued that you shouldn't judge a game before you play it. Well, now that I've played it, I can honestly say that it's too colourful. Furthermore, there was nothing epic about the settings of the game. The accessible part of Caldeum was so small I didn?t really feel it to be the magnificent ?Jewel of the East? that it was made to be, there was nothing epic about Caldeum or the High heavens for me to feel bad about them being corrupted and desecrate). I never felt any urgency to defend Bastion?s Keep because all it had were some monsters on some walls and some sprites in the background being looped. Take a page from CoD MW3. When I saw that Europe was a warzone, I couldn?t wait to get to set foot on the beach to start killing some enemies. Having just a bunch of demons sit around waiting for you to get there is incredibly uncreative and expected maybe from a 2001 game, not a 2012 game.
Graphics
Everything looks good for the game's system requirements. This is a consistency in Blizzard games. The game itself truly does feel like a "moving canvas". However, this is somewhat ruined by the sprites like the Seigebreaker Assaultbeast sprite you see while you're fighting on the walls of Bastion's Keep.
Gameplay
- The gameplay is better for the most part. At least boss and champion fights aren't "hold down one button and drink a potion every now and then". Bosses have mechanics to them now (but it doesn't change between difficulties, which is a huge letdown since bosses just do more damage and have more health, something that can easily be overcome with gear, which is really just Blizzard's way to make money; with gear). Once you get used to the new mechanics, though, the game seems incredibly dull because further difficulties has nothing new to them. True, Diablo II was the same thing, but more health, more damage is just an extremely cheap way to increase difficulty in a Blizzard game at this generation of videogaming. You can even take from WoW to add in more mechanics to each difficulty, but you didn't because you cut corners; because you made a game not based on skills, but on gear because you want to make money from the RMAH.
- battle.net 2.0; Blizzard needs to fire whoever is in charge of its development. I'm not complaining about the server downtimes (to be expected) or the online only (I don't really care, and its necessary anyways since there is the RMAH). No lobbies, terrible AH system (how did Blizzard drop the ball on this one, when you had the perfect AH with WoW?) extremely linear public game system, and no lobby just killed any success of battle.net. Public games are extremely non-social. You join a game to finish one quest, and then you probably leave. Along the way you are slowed down by other players due to the lack of communication due to the lack of a goal in general, and it drives you to play by yourself or with friends.
- Inferno mode isn't more difficult, it's just cheap. Tons of abilities and builds and even some classes are not viable. Mobs 2 shot even the tank classes who stack defensive stats. Ranged classes are forced to kite - and this doesn?t always work because some champions are unkitable, and others can and probably will one shot you during your 10 minute kite (you sacrificed damage for survivability, remember?) and regen to full before you can res and get back to them - or to resort to some really cheap/cookiecutter specs which have for the most part been nerfed. For the most part, inferno is about dying, trying to skip the impossible champion packs and dying more, waiting for the res timer, and crossing your fingers to get to the next checkpoint without dying and having to do all the aforementioned. This becomes EXTREMELY frustrating. Classes are forced to stack one or two attributes and it's Diablo II customisation all over again. Except this time, instead of being able to customize your own stats, you do it with items, and once again we arrive to the point that Blizzard wants you to get gear to be able to succeed at end game. Characters become less unique as you get closer to end game because mobs 3 shot anybody and have a ton of health because of the linear difficulty increase. Some may argue: ?well, inferno should be gear dependent to a level because it?s the hardest difficulty yet?. To that I ask, what am I supposed to farm, if end game hell gear isn?t good enough for inferno, and I can?t get any good gear in inferno without having to skip champion packs who are literally impossible for my class, or to spend sums of half an hour to wait to be ressed? To be successful at inferno within a reasonable time, you HAVE to use the AH or the RMAH, that?s just how Blizzard made the game.
- Itemisation is terrible. Nephalem Valor forces the player to lock into one spec which gives even less customisation in the game. Players pretty much get stuck in the same spec. Tons of items go to waste because the best items are rares and blues with random stats instead of uniques, this gives no motivation for anyone to farm anything because they're more likely to get say, an item with high damage and useless stats, or an item with good stats but poor damage. There isn't a drop which makes me feel extremely lucky and fortunate to get like it did in D2, which motivated me to farm more. The only thing that would've kept me playing D3 is the farm aspect, and Blizzard messed up on this too.
The biggest let down and probably the reason why I'm quitting is that continuation in D3 after reaching 60 isn't something I want to do. I've downed the Butcher on inferno and I've found myself sitting in the beginning of act 2 doing nothing. Not because I can't progress. I can if I wanted to. But it just feels tiring. Champion packs can be either easy to manageable to downright impossible. I know I can go back and farm everything, but the prospect of farming for rares and blues with a 1% chance of actually being useful for me due to the huge number of affixes as opposed to Diablo 2 is tiring for me just to think about. The problem is that I don?t know what I should be farming. What is truly considered the best, or even a good item in Diablo III? I simply don?t know because not having the concept of what?s good and what isn?t due to the number of affixes and the randomization it has makes it impossible to know. Randomisation is fine; it's what made D2 good, but having too much randomisation lead to impossible champion packs which become downright frustrating to even try to skip, and 90% of all items being moderately useless to completely useless. I can't see myself at endgame in D3, and I can't see myself progressing through D3 anymore because the progression would be so slow and tedious and I am forced to use the AH to even make it fast enough to be partly enjoyable.
The other thing is that endgame Diablo (inferno) forces me to play specs/stat accumulations that I don't want to play with. What if I don't want to play a Life leech barb stacked with Vitality? Or a monk with dodge? This is very reminiscent of WoW endgame and not Diablo endgame, where classes are forced into one spec with one stacked stat, and it's honestly something I don't enjoy. Overtime, new specs might become viable with better gear, but I feel that starting out in Inferno, you only have one or two really limited specs that you can choose from with each class if you don't have good gear, and they might not be enjoyable for you.
The worst aspect of the game is that everything that is wrong with Diablo III is stemming from the RMAH.
Why did Blizzard make the game online only?
Yes, I said that it isn?t something that bothered me, but there?s a pretty good reason why they made the game online only. One of the reasons is to prevent pirating of the game. The other reason is so everyone who is non-hardcore will be able to access or at least contribute to the RMAH. Every person who buys/sells on the RMAH will end up profiting Blizzard. If there was a single player mode, then there will be customers who will never use the RMAH, leading to lost profits. Inferno isn?t designed to be beaten by hardcore characters; in other words, hardcore characters are not expected to enjoy 100% of the game (for pretty much 95%+ of the hardcore playerbase) so the RMAH still takes up the bigger portion of the playerbase
Why did Blizzard have a good battle.net system, with bnet 1.0, but chose to make bnet 2.0 so terrible?
No game list/lobbies, and linearity in public games (made only to farm/and or to progress through the campaign). This is because Blizzard wants players to use the AH/RMAH in order to obtain gear. No more games or channels designed to trade, off to the AH we go.
Why are there extremely randomised stats? Why is inferno so cheap?
It?s because Inferno mode is gear dependent. In order to get gear, you can either spend hours grinding through the bosses to get junk that is blue/yellow/orange, but with bad stats, or just go to the RMAH and pay money to get the set that you really want. Randomised stats are there as an excuse for an actual stat system. Instead of making rares extremely hard to find, Blizzard simply made GOOD RARES extremely hard to find. There are legendaries too, which kept more or less the same concept as Uniques in D2. The only difference is that they aren?t good compared to random rares. Why? This is because to have say, Windforce being the absolute best item for DHs, the cost of Windforce will eventually deflate over time and Blizzard?s RMAH will be less and less profitable. With rares rolling random stats, however, deflation will never be a huge problem.
Why is there no stat allocation?
Blizzard has said that this is due to D2's stat allocation system only giving players the illusion of choice because everyone stacked the same stats anyways. Well, look at Inferno now. Stat point allocation is so customised across the board, right? No. Everyone is still only using 1-2 stats because 99% of specs aren't viable for inferno. Instead of being able to customise your own stats to give your character an edge due to your own research/gameplay choice, you are forced to be gear dependent when it comes to higher difficulties, leading you to make the choice of either farming for that 0.0001% rare item with the right affixes and stat weights, or to use the RMAH.
Why can you only have 10 items selling on the AH, and why can you not cancel auctions? Why is navigating through the AH, trying to find items by say, the time left on the bid, impossible?
This is to prevent anyone from playing with the AH, it is so Blizzard has full control over the AH (and more importantly, the RMAH). I wouldn't even be surprised if Blizz made it so that in D3, each respective class won't get drops that benefit themselves to incentivise them to use the RMAH so Blizz can make a profit.
Previously in D2 for instance, players that got to a part too hard for them may have looked to third parties for items to get an edge. If they had the money to spend that was their business I guess. But the game wasn't designed to be intentionally hard to the point where it would drive people to third parties, it was just the result of someone being impatient, and not wanting to work through the grind.
Smart developers see these third parties making all this money, and want to stop it (and who can blame them). Even smarter businessman says: "wait a minute, what if we provide the same service to these people that are spending their money anyway, then we can make some profit from it too". Shady businessman says: "hey we can even make the game intentionally hard, and control drop rates to spur the market". "No way," says honest business man, "we are just doing this for the players"! *snickers behind closed doors*.
But in the end, I don?t expect Blizzard to fix the game around these principles because their goal is to make money. As long as they have a mediocre game that some oblivious fans or casual gamers will defend saying it?s good, they?re content with it. And that?s fine, because it is their game. It?s just unfortunate that their game isn?t going to be a game that I?ll be playing. It?s just unfortunate that they chose the Diablo series ? my favourite series in the videogame industry - to ruthlessly make a profit out of and ruined any vestige it had.
Score: 1/5
